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See ‘Transit of Mercury’ as It Passes in Front of the Sun on Monday
It only happens about 13 times a century, but on Monday a rare celestial event was visible for most of the work day. For stargazers, that’s some serious #MondayMotivation.
Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, transited the sun’s disc for approximately 7 hours on Monday. The event began at 7:12 a.m. EDT according to NASA Sun Science’s Facebook page and finished crossing the face of the sun around 2:42 p.m. EDT.
A live stream of the event could be seen at NASA’s Facebook page:
NASA scientists spent much of Monday morning discussing the transit in live streams shared to Facebook and other social media accounts.
For novice stargazers, they too could catch a glimpse of the diminutive planet’s trek across our sun, but as NASA warns, one should never look directly at the sun and “viewing this event safely requires a telescope or high-powered binoculars fitted with solar filters made of specially-coated glass or Mylar.”
If you missed the event, NASA has you covered with the below video.